Neither here nor there and a little bit of both: The ambiguous loss experience of parents who lost a baby to sudden infant death syndrome

Losing a baby to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) triggers a severe loss reaction. The severity of the loss may be attributed to the baby’s age, the lack of satisfactory explanation for the death, and a lack of social recognition. The current study aimed to examine the loss experience of Israeli parents (N = 12) who lost a baby to SIDS through the theoretical lens of ambiguous loss. A deductive and inductive thematic analysis revealed that, for these bereaved parents, entities of the baby—physical and psychological—are unclear. Thus, the parents’ loss is likewise unclear and ambiguous.